Corsair's SSDs include a SandForce SF-2280 processor, which natively supports SATA 6Gb/s, as well as ONFI synchronous flash memory.

Corsair says that the drives offer "outstanding read/write performance" and "significantly faster system response, boot times, and application load times than SATA 2 SSDs." The drives can read at speeds of up to 555 MB/s, and write at up to 525 MB/s.

'Premium systems'

Thi La, vice president of memory products at Corsair, said, "The new 180GB and 240GB models are ideal for premium systems which require large amounts of high-performance storage."

The drives are backwards-compatible with the SATA 2 interface, and include a 3.5-inch adapter for larger drive bays.

As SSDs become more capacious, we've reached a stage where there's little need to use them in conjunction with traditional platter-based hard disk drives.

Corsair's do come with mighty price tags, though - $379 USD (£232) for the 180GB model, and $489 USD (£299) for the 240GB drive.